Friday, January 29, 2010

I always had great intentions of turning my job at directing an online development team into a cool blog blending news, technology, media, the social sphere and more. It was a great gig where I got to dip into a lot of new things, and I thought that would translate into much writing.

Well, either time wasn't there or I didn't seize it. Working for a newspaper, there is always a public persona to protect, and while I thought I would be free-er to write from the Tech side, it was not to be.

Now I'm back in the newsroom proper (Online Projects Editor), so I don't think the opportunities will get any better. But we'll try.

One milestone of the past year:

We brought four new computers into the house in 2009:

* Two 9in Eee PC laptops for my two middle-school boys. They came with a Debian Linux distribution, but it was locked down, so I've tried several different flavors of Linux on them. Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Xbuntu, Easy Peasy. The little buggers are a challenge because they have only a 4G solid state drive (not to mention a tiny keyboard.) Nice that it's solid state, but that's pretty small. We ended up with one on Easy Peasy and the UNR on the other. I think UNR is better in this case.

* I got a Dell Mini 10 (not the "v") from the Dell Outlet for about $250. It was a pretty good deal with 20% off coupon from http://www.twitter.com/delloutlet. This came with Windows XP, which didn't last 5 minutes before I blew it away for Ubuntu Netbook Remix. This created a slew of problems already chronicled, but I learned a lot.

* Lastly is an 21.5" iMac. A sweeeet machine that I don't get enough time on. We needed this upgrade since we all our music is digital (7K+ tracks) on iTunes and AppleTV, plus iPhoto, etc. Our 2007 iMac work loaner was not keeping up.

Add to that the remaining Compaq destop and my work Dell running running XP, and we have too many OS's!